I suppose that technically you could say that anyone who does not understand the true nature of life (which is probably most of us) is already running a simulation of life. We are attempting to live by a pre-programmed set of set of thoughts and beliefs that do not represent what is best for all humans beings. While we can strive for a Utopia where all humans work for the betterment of each other, that simply amounts to another set of pre-programmed thoughts and ideas. Who is to say what is best?

Simulation like a game of the Sims or simulation like Lisa Simpson's Sea Monkey civilization?

Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than the sage among his books. For to you kingdoms and their armies are things mighty and enduring, but to him they are but toys of the moment, to be overturned with the flick of a finger.”

If I can indulge the OP and be the path of most resistance would a simulation require such a vast universe? And one which spans 13+ billion years, a billion years of evolution, and the freak occurrence of a cerebral cortex? On top of the mammal and reptiliation parts of the brain? When we share dead genetic code from age old evolutionary ancestors. I'm usually a skeptic but if I were designing sim for the fun of it I would not go to that much trouble. A good quote is "evolution is smarter than you are". Our universe(s) evolved, we evolved. If I were to put an equally strange idea out there - what if the universe evolved to create a being like us? Say we are the birds spreading the seed, the universe is the tree?

(20-10-2014 06:53 AM)MadDog Wrote: I'm usually a skeptic but if I were designing sim for the fun of it I would not go to that much trouble.

Might not be just for the fun of it.

(20-10-2014 06:53 AM)MadDog Wrote: If I were to put an equally strange idea out there - what if the universe evolved to create a being like us? Say we are the birds spreading the seed, the universe is the tree?

Sounds about right.

There is only one really serious philosophical question, and that is suicide. -Camus

I did say "medium we are using today". Quantum computing would increase computing power density by basically infinite orders of magnitude, if the theories are right and we figure out how to make it work.

Well... kind of.

General purpose quantum computing is a superset of general purpose binary computing, to be sure, but the theoretical improvement in computational efficiency ranges from exponential (ie factoring) to none (ie addition).

There's a theoretical limit to qubit density as well, and it's not that much higher than for transistors. You can't have a discrete quantum objects (fun fact: transistors are already quantum objects) once their spatial separation is on the order of the spread of their own waveforms.

Quantum computers are able to convert certain classes of classical algorithms from being very expensive to less expensive, for example from exponential complexity to quadratic complexity. You still need a fast quantum computer to solve most of these problems quickly, but there is a huge difference between exponential and quadratic.